1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, print data with the heavy use of bitmap data has often been used for printing for photo books, for example. Such print data is described in a page description language (PDL) and is rasterized by an analysis in a controller or an image forming apparatus to convert the color into a CMYK value. The print data converted into a CMYK value in this way is used for print in the image forming apparatus.
Rasterizing for bitmap data requires a larger volume of processing and a longer processing time in comparison with text data indicating images of characters and graphic data indicating images of a table or a graphic. This leads to a low print speed.
In print on demand (POD) as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-193477, a print job which is sent from a personal computer (PC) connected to an image forming apparatus through a network is temporarily stored in a printer controller or the image forming apparatus. Print quality is then checked through test printing, and a job ticket or page data is edited. If an intended print quality is achieved, final printing is performed. These processes are executed as workflow including functions of so-called job storage, editing, and reprinting.
The technique described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-193477 needs to rasterize print data for test printing every time a job ticket or page data is edited. This leads to low productivity.